What makes consumers use VoIP over mobile phones? Free riding or consumerization of new service

Consumer acceptance of technological innovations is crucial to marketing strategy and policy development. This study analyzes consumer behaviors in mobile voice over Internet protocol (mVoIP), focusing on the antecedents of consumers' intentions. Using a context-specific extension of the Technology Acceptance Model, mVoIP acceptance was investigated based on the salient belief of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and facilitating factors. The results show that quality factors of mVoIP significantly influence the usefulness and ease of use, which subsequently affect the adoption of the technology. Call and service quality were found to be significant factors, followed by mobility and coverage. The policy and managerial implications of mVoIP are discussed based on the model. In conclusion, this study provides in-depth analysis and heuristic data on the consumer drivers, market dynamics, and policy implication within the mVoIP ecosystem.     

Business groups and corporate transparency in emerging markets: Empirical evidence from India

This study examines the difference in corporate transparency of firms affiliated with business groups and unaffiliated firms in India. Based on previous studies we measured corporate transparency using equity analysts’ forecast error and dispersion. We find that firms affiliated with business groups are less transparent than unaffiliated firms. Lack of transparency leads to higher analyst forecast error and dispersion. This study also finds that business group-affiliated firms with more intra-group capital transactions have higher forecast error and dispersion. The findings of this study suggest that firms affiliated with business groups are less transparent due to their reliance on internal capital markets, and therefore lack incentives to disclose information to market participants. As a result, the information asymmetry between business groups and the capital market is higher, restricting the activities of information intermediaries such as equity analysts, who play an important role in the external capital market.     

The influence of regulations on the efficiency of telecommunications operators: A meta-frontier analysis

The telecommunications industry has a great ripple effect on the overall national economy. However, there is no consensus about what is the optimal regulation policy for the telecommunications industry. Regulations on the telecommunications industry are different by region (i.e. United States, European Union and Asia). A number of studies have been conducted on comparative efficiency analysis for different policies that apply stochastic frontier analysis or data envelope analysis. However, these comparative studies are inappropriate because the production functions for each region are not identical. Thus, this paper addresses meta-frontier methodology, which can reflect differences in production functions. The results indicate that the United States has the highest meta-frontier efficiency in contrast to previous research findings.     

Well-intended policies

Market failures provide a rationale for policy intervention. But policies are often hard to alter once in place. We argue that this inertia can result in well-intended policies having sizable negative long-run effects on aggregate output and productivity. In our theory, financial frictions provide a rationale for providing subsidized credit to productive entrepreneurs to alleviate the credit constraints they face. In the short run, such targeted subsidies have the intended effect and raise aggregate output and productivity. In the long run, however, individual productivities mean-revert while individual-specific subsidies remain fixed. As a result, entry into entrepreneurship is distorted: The subsidies prop up entrepreneurs that were formerly productive but are now unproductive, while impeding the entry of newly productive individuals. Therefore aggregate output and productivity are depressed. Our theory provides an explanation for two empirical observations on developing countries: idiosyncratic distortions that disproportionately affect productive establishments, and temporary growth miracles followed by growth failures.     

How do future business leaders view globalization?

Recent antiglobalization protests reveal a wide divide between the elites and the public in terms of how they view globalization. Therefore, it seems important to know the attitude toward globalization held by future business leaders, who are being educated currently and who will shape the global economy in the future. We find that college students, albeit at a young age, hold a substantially more positive view toward globalization when compared with the general public. Business majors and students with white‐collar parents are especially likely to have such a positive attitude. The implications of these findings for managers and management educators are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Circular domains

I introduce the notion of circular domains and prove that on any circular domain there is no strategy-proof and nondictatorial social choice function. Moreover, I show that on any proper subset of a minimal circular domain, there exists a group strategy-proof and essential social choice function. These results together detect the minimal size of the domains over which the incompatibility arises with respect to pairs of democratic-incentive requirements (nondictatorial, strategy-proof) and (essential, group strategy-proof).     

The impact of incentive regulation on productivity in the US telecommunications industry: A stochastic frontier approach

This paper investigates whether the substitution of price cap regulation (PCR) and other forms of incentive regulation for traditional rate of return regulation (RRR) has had a measurable effect on productivity growth in the US telecommunications industry. A stochastic frontier approach is employed to compute the efficiency change, technological progress, and productivity growth for 25 LECs over the 1988-1998 time periods. By examining the relationship between the change in productivity growth and regulatory regime variables and other control variables, we find that PCR has a significant and positive effect, both in contemporaneous and lagged specifications.     

Voluntary Quality Disclosure under Price‐Signaling Competition

We analyze an oligopolistic competition with differentiated products and qualities. The quality of a product is not known to consumers. Each firm can make an imperfect disclosure of its product quality before engaging in price‐signaling competition. There are two regimes for separating equilibrium in our model depending on the parameters. Our analysis reveals that, in one of the separating regimes, price signaling leads to intense price competition between the firms under which not only the high‐quality firm but also the low‐quality firm chooses to disclose its product quality to soften the price competition. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interconnection among academic journal websites: multilateral versus bilateral interconnection

Electronic academic journal websites provide text and data mining (and linking) services. Fully realizing the benefit of these services requires interconnection among websites. We perform a comparison between multilateral interconnection through an open platform and bilateral interconnection, and find that publishers are fully interconnected in the former regime whereas they are often partially interconnected in the latter regime for exclusion or differentiation motives. If partial interconnection arises for differentiation motives, exclusion of a small publisher(s) occurs more often in the former than in the latter. In the case of multilateral interconnection, an open platform generates lower welfare than a for‐profit platform.     

Contracts under Wage Compression: A Case of Beneficial Collusion

This paper considers a principal-agent model with adverse selection and limited wage discrimination. Under wage compression, an agent may have an incentive to free ride on other agents by manipulating his private information. When collusion among the agents is not possible, the principal distorts the output schedule to reduce information rent associated with the free-riding opportunity. Under collusion, however, the principal can reduce the information rent by inducing side contracts among the agents, thus partly removing the distortion in the output schedule. We show that side contracts among the agents take place in equilibrium and that the prospect of collusion is beneficial.